2019 was a particularly phenomenal year. just piecing together the one-second moments of my year is enough to make my heart full. the good, the bad, the ugly - they all seem sweet now that they are coloured in the hues of retrospect. akin to disparate jigsaw pieces that each carried their own fragment of a grand picture. when disparate, they didn't make sense - some moments were so wearisome they wore my heart out but i still had to carry them with me nevertheless, until the tidings of time brought good outcomes - outcomes i had yearned for, outcomes that are now past, outcomes that i may take for granted in this moment. i read somewhere that we tend to live for the future, but if only we would pause and realise: we are living in the moments we had so desperately wanted to be in (or the clarity of knowing we'll get here) just a good six months/one year ago.
denise a year ago would have loved to know that she successfully graduated from college on schedule despite taking a semester off for aws - those insane, consecutive 28mc semesters she got accustomed to but would have loved to run away from in a heartbeat. she would have been ecstatic to know that capstone turned out to be a possible feat to accomplish, after an entire year poured into churning and cutting an academic piece into a 10k individual word thesis. she would have been so proud to know that her capstone advisor became her biggest champion as she presented that synthesised work to the global affairs faculty and her peers (and that her eye-candy prof was smiling and nodding the entire time to her presentation). she would have soared to the moon knowing that she made it to a tech enterprise that has since given her access to such great leaders/mentors invested in her growth, to an eleven-people strong fy20 cohort that has made the transition to working life seem too easy, that she would have visited san francisco on a work trip just to witness how big this company is, to meet with the co-founder and drink the kool aid, and begun her journey towards learning the one thing she had wanted to learn starting her career i.e. gaining client-facing experience. and in terms of love, that she would been able to visit osaka/kyoto and go on a junior-suite royal caribbean cruise with her favourite person. how comforted would she have been, denise from a year ago, to know that everything she had worried about eventually turned out to be not just okay, but blessed beyond expectation?
i search for words to describe how some moments were so dull or difficult that i could only sit at utown green and find solace in being alone, in faith, in longing and in the in-between. one of the hardest weeks was that week that contained back-to-back the final capstone presentation and concluding round of case presentation & interview for the current company i am in. i never realised senior year would be so tough with the collective pressure of capstone (and bc this is a college that everyone feels the implicit pressure to show up with their best work, it made it all the more harder. yes, capstone was not going to land me a job but i couldn't let it flop - in spite of everything), the terrifying prospect of joblessness upon graduation - made more so pressurising bc i was juggling with almost twice the academic workload of my peers on top of everything. i remember that monday i was literally shrivelling in stress that i could barely eat. i had worked all day on my capstone slides and forgot to eat dinner till it was past nine, so i made myself some tom yum cup noodles. tom yum's my favourite msg flavour, but even so i recall eating one mouthful before puking it back into the cup and throwing the entire thing away. i had shrivelled to the point where my body didn't allow itself to eat. thursday evening was when the weight of those two momentous events lifted off my shoulders. i remember that night fondly: i had dinner with gym bud fred and we bumped into one of the case presentation panel k at the train station - he told me i did a great job, which gave me so much hope. it was drizzling and i dropped by seven-eleven to buy a beer. that night i cracked it open and savoured it (or the victory of ending the week) while slumped in bed, deliberating my performance, anticipating the monday afternoon call that i did not know then carried my offer. but all these are just fond memories now in retrospect. in the moment i felt like i could barely bear it, but that too, did pass. i have a fond memory of my capstone prof (who also became my favourite career advisor and all-in-all bae prof ) meeting and shaking hands with bae saying "i've heard so much about you!" "guess denise's just been shuttling between spending time with us both." "aw cute! i saw she wrote about you in the acknowledgements". date nights with bae (when he was not on month-long overseas exercises) became my weekly respite. they kept me sane and grounded, just like the familiar feeling of coming home. and now we're finally in the same stage in life - after waiting out two good years. we did it, love. we did it, together.
in this year i resolve to do two things: (1) to think of God particularly in fun times (usually those times are when i feel like i don't want Him there) (2) to fiercely protect the part of me that loves to create. work has made me lose that part of myself increasingly, but it is this part of myself that i keep coming back to in order to find myself - it is what makes me feel alive, and feel at home in my own skin.
in this year i resolve to do two things: (1) to think of God particularly in fun times (usually those times are when i feel like i don't want Him there) (2) to fiercely protect the part of me that loves to create. work has made me lose that part of myself increasingly, but it is this part of myself that i keep coming back to in order to find myself - it is what makes me feel alive, and feel at home in my own skin.
writing this from the sun-deck of the royal caribbean cruise ship on my last night here. crescent moon in the pitch black sky, corona in hand, kygo in my ears. solitude and cathartic writing that forces me to think and reflect with greater clarity. am thankful, and this is indeed the best way to end the first day of 2020.
happy new year folks.
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